Daughter, Actor, Scholar, Advocate

Heather married Mark Fields on August 13. In introducing my toast I said we were “Celebrating a bon voyage to Heather and Mark’s Excellent Adventure.” This blog reprises my remarks.

The bride and groom have each lived their own adventures before today, but now, before they embark on their next – shared – adventure, I want to tell you about some of Heather’s.

From the youngest age she was a dancer, a singer, an actor…and a bookworm.

For me, her father, two images of this little girl are etched in my mind; dancing in the aisle of a department store at about 4 years old, a photo of which landed on the front page of a small-town Minnesota newspaper, an indelible image of her creative, performing side. Second, of a little girl with big round glasses, on a small chair in a corner, with a large book, reading, her intent, intelligent, learning side.

Through her early years she seemed mostly focused on her performing side…

She was selected twice to the Minnesota All-State Choir, trod the boards in musicals – South Pacific, Annie, and plays, including Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, a State Championship One-Act. Flutist, middle school cheerleader, and still a top academic performer. Friends remember she talked about law school as early as the 8th grade.

It was theater she pursued between Delta Gamma sorority parties at the University of Minnesota. I see those DG’s are here. Still friends, and that certainly means a lot.

Heather didn’t hesitate, Gopher theater – and history – degree in hand, to head for Hollywood…Malibu, and The OC, to film, stage, child care, and waiting on tables.

There was some film including the lead in “The Layover,” (“A coming of middle-age film,” wrapped in 2001, unreleased) but it was on stage she left her mark, even in that entertainment megalopolis.

On stage she originated principal roles in three world premier plays, one the lead.

Of "A Summer with Hemingway’s Twin" (World Premier at Alternative Repertory Theater, Santa Ana) L.A. Times theater critic T.H. McCulloh wrote, Heather Kjos is marvelously restrained and real as Lila, the college student who spends her whole summer hoping to meet her literary idol. Kjos’ buoyant, wide-eyed wonder at being with the actual Hemingway family is refreshing and believable.

Of Heather’s role in "Six Random Women," Joel Beers wrote in the Orange County Weekly:

There's Miss District of Columbia (a perfectly cast, deer-in-the-headlights Heather Kjos), who sees in the Miss US of A pageant everything bright and shiny about the most wonderful, blessed-by-God nation on Earth.

That tug of the law was still there, and it finally pulled her back to Minnesota, where she took the LSAT and caught on with a Minneapolis law firm as a docketing clerk. She was good at that, good enough to garner a Chicago job for more money, then become a paralegal in intellectual property law, completing her coursework at Loyola University.

It all just whetted that appetite for law school, which sent her to St. Paul, to the William Mitchell College of Law. While there, she was runner-up in the Intellectual Property National Moot Court competition, on the IP Law Review, clerked for a professor, was published in journals, and has been listed in Westlaw. At that table are law school classmates.

She’s employed as an attorney, no small thing in this market.

Now with Mark the next, the start of many more adventures

The toast is coming in a moment, but first, this piece of doggerel:

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

I propose a toast to Mark and Heather:

Here’s to the past, for all that you have learned
Here’s to the present, for all that you share
Here’s to the future, for all that you look forward to together.